Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood

Author:Lauren Blackwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

* * *

It was closer to lunch, now, than breakfast. I jumped down the short distance from the perch and paid the stable boy, waiting for Emma as she slowly climbed out. It was obvious she’d been crying, her face red and puffy, and I took the liberty of tipping down her hat to hide it.

“You have enough to live on?” I asked. I didn’t want to specify money in this public space, but she seemed to understand, patting her vest pocket and bag.

“Enough to reach England. And I have plenty of friends and family to help me from there.”

Her face was already rosy from the heat. I wasn’t sure she’d last a day without boiling.

We were quiet for a moment.

“I really respect what you’re doing,” Emma said suddenly. “Finding your own job, your own way in life. Women don’t have that option where I come from.”

Women here didn’t have many choices either. No one did unless you had money. Starve or survive, those were our options.

I shrugged. “I just do what’s necessary to survive.”

“I suppose it’s about time I do the same.”

“Do you have protection?” I asked. She allowed me a glance of the gun she had in her pocket. “God be with you, Emma.”

“And with you.” Emma took my hand and nodded. She looked both certain and uncertain at once.

I watched her go for a moment, then looked up at Saba, who had joined me.

It was time to go—my good survival habits didn’t like me standing out on an open street for too long.

We snaked through the crowded marketplace, passed fruit and nut vendors shouting, customers haggling over meat, before passing over into the labyrinth.

This time I didn’t bother going into the church—by now Jember would be sleeping after his busy night. I led Saba to the back alley of the church, blocked off from the maze behind it by a wall along all sides but the front, to where a cellar door was embedded in the dirt. The chain and lock weren’t on the outside handles, which meant Jember had locked it from the inside. He was definitely home.

I looked at Saba. “Will you be okay waiting outside for a few minutes? No one ever comes down here, I promise.”

They really didn’t. Law enforcement held no power over the church—or rather, the people seemed to respect the church over law enforcement—and so the portion of my childhood I spent under the church somehow felt freeing in more ways than one. Perhaps that’s why Jember had chosen to live beneath the church, literally. No one would dare commit a crime in the vicinity. It was the safest place in the city to be.

Despite that, I knew there were a couple booby traps around the door. Just because it was safe didn’t mean Jember trusted anyone.

“You may not want to touch anything,” I added.

Saba gave me a reassuring smile, waving me toward the door. I knelt in front of a small grate beside it, a forceful tug with both hands making it squeak against its metal chamber before yielding to me.

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